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Berlusconi Strikes Back

Or, some people, familiar with adversity and reversals of fortune, know merely to wait until someone else hands you a trump card.

Silvio Berlusconi, struck rudely and brutally in the face with a souvenir statue, is turning the tables on his critics. All Silvio bashing is now the work of anti-social elements.

With his huge fortune and control of his country's media monopoly, not to mention his political charm and acumen, Berlusconi is as powerful a head of state as few have ever been in a democracy. Yet even here, his arrogance—of a kind perhaps never seen in the media age—has meant a steady drip-drip erosion of credibility and story. Having leveled his opposition, and insured his longevity with crass and artful manipulations of the judicial system, his fate still seemed to be sealed by his own excesses: clownish ignominy, if not prison.